Avec quel succès Dickens utilise-t-il l'histoire des fantômes et son atmosphère?

How successful is Dickens in making use of the ghost story and its atmosphere?

“The Signalman” takes place in the 19th century after the Industrial Revolution when railways and telegraphs were still a newly discovered technology and therefore were treated with suspicion. In his narrative, Dickens expresses his uncertainty about technology and the danger that it might bring. The language he uses is very effective in creating a supernatural and mysterious atmosphere and the gothic elements of death, darkness and dread make it a particularly successful ghost story.

The setting is very significant for creating the ghostly ambiance. The narrator’s exclamation of the words “Halloa! Below there!” plunges us into a dark “unnatural valley” where the rational world of technology combines with the unearthly underworld of supernatural apparitions. The place is hostile and isolated from the outside world; the air is described as “barbarous, depressing and forbidding” and there is so little sunlight that the place has an “earthy, deadly smell”. Moreover it is at the entrance of a “gloomy black tunnel” from which trains emerge with immense power and rapidity causing a “vague vibration in the earth”. This alliteration increases the suspense as we can almost hear the trains rushing out from the darkness of the tunnel in which the characters are unable to see. Not only does the narrator feel like he had “left the natural world”; there is an impression of an unavoidable danger coming.

Furthermore, perception is distorted in this “deep trench”; both the narrator and the signalman can’t neither see each other nor communicate properly. The signalman looks down the Line instead of looking up to where the narrator’s voice was calling from and the narrator sees the signalman as a “foreshortened and shadowed figure”. At the beginning there is also a tangible tension and suspicion between them as they mistake each other for ghosts or spirits. The signalman regards his visitor wit

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